Starring CADS, STORIS, Quorso, and Blue Yonder: last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance

RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, launches, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Including Berrios, AF Blakemore & Son, Studenac, JCPenney, Authentic Brands Group, Co-op, Evri, Tractor Supply Company, and Albertsons.

Evri

UK parcel delivery company, Evri, has announced a £19 million investment in new plans to fast track the roll-out of electric cargo bikes.

The move, which is expected to give Evri the UK’s biggest fleet of e-cargo bikes for parcel delivery, are part of a wider £19 million investment in sustainability. This will see Evri grow its fleet of e-cargo bikes from 33 to 99 and electric vehicles (EVs) from 168 to 270 within the next year.

The firm also has plans to grow its fleet of electric cargo bikes to 3,000 over the next decade - as part of its wider plans to reduce carbon emissions across its network and become a net-zero company by 2035.

Evri has established a dedicated "final-mile electrification taskforce" which will spearhead innovative solutions, explore partnerships, and implement strategies to transform last mile deliveries into a zero-emission operation. 

Evri already has electric cargo bikes operating in London, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge and the company currently delivers 1.5 million parcels a year, by bike or EV. It aims to triple that number to around four million over the next year.

These deliveries are part of the more than 720 million parcels that Evri delivers each year.

Berrios

STORIS, a provider of integrated retail software solutions, has announced a partnership with Berrios, a Puerto Rico-based furniture and appliance retailer.

The tie up will see the integration of STORIS’s suite of retail management solutions into Berrios’s operations, with the aim of enabling it to optimise inventory management, improve sales processes, and deliver a seamless omnichannel experience to their customer.

AF Blakemore & Son

StoreSpace - retail space planning software from CADS - has helped the UK’s largest SPAR wholesaler AF Blakemore & Son transform its processes, leading to more optimised space planning, boosted operational efficiency and more informed decision-making backed with accurate data.

AF Blakemore is a family owned business, operating over 260 stores and supplying 900+. Prior to StoreSpace, it used individual flat CAD files and multiple different systems and processes for space planning, which was time-consuming and no longer fit for purpose.

It sought to streamline operations, centralise store data and gain additional insights into store planning, so enlisted the help of retail space planning expert CADS – and its intuitive StoreSpace software.

“StoreSpace has provided AF Blakemore with an easy-to-use planning platform which eliminates many of the sticking points the company previously experienced. The whole business now enjoys easy access to a comprehensive, up-to-date data repository, coupled with a more streamlined and efficient process,” says Richard Burford, Customer Success Specialist at CADS.

Waitrose

Waitrose is extending its collaboration with Blue Yonder with the addition of the supply chain solution provider’s forecasting capability.

The move marks the first significant introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into Waitrose’s forecasting – and is designed to improve the  levels of availability across the retailer’s stores.

Rather than relying on historical sales data and human intuition, the AI forecasting capability – part of Blue Yonder Demand Planning – focuses on customer behaviour and analyses ‘why’ customers bought what they did rather than just ‘what’ they bought.

The capability understands and learns from the trading environment to provide a better forecast based on customer behaviour. For example, it will learn how customers responded to a variety of influences including weather variations, major sporting and cultural events and promotions.

The upgrade is part of a significant investment in technology across Waitrose’s supply chain.

Studenac

Croatian retailer, Studenac, has announced plans to build a new distribution centre near the country’s capital Zagreb that will open next year, deploying solutions to enhance the efficiency and capacity of its logistics network, ensuring shorter delivery times to stores and improving collaboration with suppliers.

The facility in Velika Gorica will cover 36,000 square metres and eventually create approximately 500 new jobs.

Studenac, which is owned by a fund managed by Enterprise Investors, a private equity firm in Central and Eastern Europe, currently has a central distribution centre in Dugopolje, near the coastal city of Split, which supports cross-dock operations in Zadar, as well as semi cross-docks in Dubrovnik, Pazin, Zagreb and Kutina.

JCPenney

JCPenney has unveiled a new upgrade to its 1.67 million square foot Reno, Nevada distribution centre.

As part of the retailer’s self-funded $1 billion reinvestment strategy announced last year, it has invested $40 million in updating the equipment and infrastructure of the Reno facility to increase order efficiency and speed for online shoppers.

The centrepiece of the upgrade is the implementation of the Joey Pouch sorting system, a computerised induction, sorting and packing system.

It includes new induction process technologies, a fully automated sorter to assemble orders and a new packing system that includes invoice and shipping label printing for each order in the station.

The upgrade is expected to improve the customer experience by ensuring that online orders are complete with higher accuracy and shipped out more quickly.

Authentic Brands Group

Cart.com has announced a partnership with Authentic Brands Group.

“We’re honoured to partner with Authentic, one of the largest and most iconic market leaders in retail,” says Omair Tariq, Founder and CEO at Cart.com.

"The partnership is a significant opportunity to use our technology and operational expertise to support Authentic’s momentum and deliver growth and value.”

Cart.com’s customer engagement solution aims to create seamless experiences across every channel, including inbound and outbound telesales as well as omnichannel support across text, email, phone, live chat, social media and more.

Its merchant of record services manages the complexity of online payments for the lifecycle of orders.

The company supports payment and sales tax collection, consumer and data regulation compliance, chargeback management and fraud prevention, simplifying payments infrastructure and reconciliation for brands.

Co-op

Co-op and InPost are expanding their roll-out of parcel collection and returns lockers, with the expectation that they will reach 150 locations this year.

Chris Conway, Co-op E-commerce Director, says: “Our focus is to make things easier and more convenient for our member-owners and customers.”

“And with our stores located conveniently in high streets, transport hubs, university campuses and residential developments, InPost lockers can help residents and time pressed shoppers in our communities pick up or return parcels at a time that is convenient to them, on their way to or from work or when they pop out to pick up their groceries, quickly, easily and conveniently.”

Tractor Supply Company

US retailer Tractor Supply Company has completed a chain wide roll-out of data and AI powered co-pilot capabilities with Quorso.

This provides store team members with personalised, top priority actions, and intelligent workflows for store operations.

Founded in 1938, Tractor Supply Company is an American chain of stores that sells products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, livestock, equine and pet care for recreational farmers and ranchers, pet owners, and landowners

In a LinkedIn post, Glenn Allison, Vice President, IT Applications Development, said: “The data driven insights include improvement opportunities such as proactively addressing out of stock inventory, product facing issues with store planogram, damaged product, and various other use cases to improve operations.”

“Thank you to the team and Quorso that helped support the chain wide roll-out.”

Albertsons

Last week, Albertsons announced the launch of Collective TV and reported that personalised and localised dynamic content optimisation across the channel will be enabled through Clinch.

Clinch, which is Albertsons’ chosen omnichannel ad server and DCO partner, then announced a pilot campaign - Campbell's Snacks, a division of the Campbell Soup Company, was the first of several CPG clients opting to extend their media buys with The Collective's CTV offering.